


Marrow and Bone

by twinyards



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: M/M, i know i'm shocked too, newtmas - Freeform, something almost happy?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-21 01:15:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13730010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twinyards/pseuds/twinyards
Summary: Newt’s voice shook slightly as he spoke. “Do you still love her?”Thomas didn’t have to ask who Newt meant. Teresa. Of course he would ask about Teresa. Only, the answer was simple. And easy. The only easy thing about this situation.“No,” Thomas breathed, closing his eyes for fear of what emotions he might see cross Newt’s face. “Maybe the Thomas I was before loved her, but.. But the Thomas that woke up in the Maze, he’s always wanted someone else.”Silence cleaved the world. Neither of them were breathing. And Thomas could have sworn even the cranks out in the night were holding their breath, waiting to see what might happen next. Anxiety was a current beneath his skin; moving swift and clear and with a power that suggested it could not be stopped. He was holding his head above the water but soon enough he’d be drowning in it.





	Marrow and Bone

Thomas hadn’t slept in what felt like days. Every time he closed his eyes, he was overcome with terror. He saw Ben’s face locked in desperation as he was forced into the maze, Chuck’s chest blooming with a red rose of blood, Teresa turning her back on him, everyone he knew fading into dust around him.

The nightmares had started weeks ago, but they were starting to haunt him now even when he was awake. He missed his corner of the Deadheads in the Glade, his back pressed comfortingly against the walls and the echoes of laughing Gladers barely reaching him through the trees. He missed feeling halfway safe, halfway sane. 

Because the truth was that Thomas was haunted. Not just by the past and the deaths he’d seen, but the future and the deaths he  _ would  _ see. He was terrified every day of who might be next. He’d lost so much already, but Thomas still had so much more that could slip between his fingers. 

He put on a brave face. As brave as he could manage. Because his friends needed him to be a pillar, to hold them up when they were buckling. But the truth was that Thomas was scared, every moment of every day. 

Thomas didn’t think he could stomach watching anyone else die.

His fear had morphed itself into hypervigalism. He was awake while the others slept, paranoid gaze sweeping out into the night, listening for cranks or WICKED soldiers come to take them away. The Scorch offered a hundred hiding places around every corner, but that didn’t mean they were safe.

These days, Thomas wasn’t sure ‘safe’ was a concept that even still existed. 

Tonight, he’d stationed himself in the doorway of the abandoned warehouse they were squating in. Denver was the least destructed place he’d seen in his limited memory, but it was still tarnished and broken. Outside the protective wall, it was still chaos. 

The others had been asleep for hours. Even Gally, who Thomas still didn’t quite trust, was curled up, content to sleep away the troubles of the world. Thomas should have woken up Minho or Brenda or Jorge to take watch hours ago, but he felt no pull towards sleep. So he stayed awake and let the others rest. 

He tried not to jolt when Newt shifted from where he lay beside their dying fire, sitting up and rubbing his eyes of sleep. Thomas’ chest did a complicated flip, pulling towards the golden haired boy and away at the same time. He wanted to stare at Newt until he’d burned every line and curve and plane of Newt’s face into his memory, but he tore his gaze away. Sometimes the things you wanted were better left out of your reach.

“When’s the last time you slept?” Newt asked, coming to rest beside Thomas in the doorway. 

Thomas shrugged noncommittally, and kept his gaze trained into the darkness. If he listened hard enough, he could hear Cranks rummaging in the dark a few streets over. The realization made his skin crawl, and he subtly shifted his body to press Newt back inside the walls. 

A hand came to rest on Thomas’ shoulder. He nearly flinched out from under it before realizing it was just Newt trying to capture his attention. “Hey, Tommy, look at me.” Thomas didn’t want to, didn’t want Newt to see the apprehension and paranoia in his eyes, but he was turning before he could think to stop. Things with Newt were always like that; his body reacting before his brain and his heart could catch up. 

Newt’s eyes were red-rimmed with sleep, but it was the worry in their depths that made Thomas cringe. He hated being the source of Newt’s anxiety; hated that the older boy always knew when Thomas was hiding away his own demons. “You need to sleep. You can’t go on like this much longer.”

“I can’t.” Thomas shook his head, as if that were answer enough. 

He knew it wasn’t. He knew Newt wanted answers Thomas wasn’t sure he could give. He knew that there was so much going unsaid but Thomas couldn’t think beyond that spot on his shoulder where Newt’s hand was still resting, fingers curled into Thomas’ shirt so he couldn’t pull away. 

“Whatever it is that’s eating at you,” Newt said, his fingers digging a little deeper into Thomas’ skin, “you don’t need to suffer through it alone, Tommy. The world’s problems aren’t yours to solve. Not by yourself.”

He was shaking his head before he could stop himself. Newt was right, of course he was, but he was also wrong. Because the problems weren’t Newt’s to solve either, or Minho’s or Brenda’s or even Gally’s. They weren’t anyone’s problems to solve but they still had to be solved. And Thomas wasn’t prepared to watch anyone else suffer under that burden, so he took all of it for himself. 

Newt’s fingers fell away. Thomas was instantly aching from the loss of touch, but he didn’t dare move. Instead he stared into Newt’s face and waited, knowing there were more words to come. And selfishly, he wanted to hear them, no matter what they were, simply because they came from Newt’s mouth.

“It’s okay to be scared, Tommy. Some right awful things have happened to us.”

He didn’t realize he was crying until Newt grabbed his shoulders, forcing air into his lungs with the touch. Thomas hated himself for letting the tears fall, for showing a weakness like this, but he was grateful it was Newt who bore witness. Newt always seemed to understand that black mark on Thomas’ soul, to accept it without judgement. 

“It’s more than just being scared,” Thomas whispered, sniffing away his tears and edging himself a little close to Newt. They’d shifted towards each other even more than before, but Newt dropped his arms and waited patiently for Thomas to continue. “It’s that I understand. All of it. Everything WICKED did and all the people that betrayed us, I understand why they did those things. And I hate that I don’t hate them for it. I know I should. My friends are dead because of them, but… But they believe in their cure the way we believe in keeping each other alive. And I don’t know how to hate them for it. Any of them. Not just yet.”

The rest of the words were unspoken, but Thomas could tell by the stillness in Newt’s body that the other boy understood. 

They were so close now; he could feel the heat radiating off Newt’s skin and the tension in the other boy’s body as if he were forcing himself to be still. He could taste Newt’s breath in the air, feel the warm puffs of it against his cheek as they both panted in anticipation. Every nerve ending in his body was singing with it. 

Newt’s voice shook slightly as he spoke. “Do you still love her?”

Thomas didn’t have to ask who Newt meant. Teresa. Of course he would ask about Teresa. Only, the answer was simple. And easy. The only easy thing about this situation.

“No,” Thomas breathed, closing his eyes for fear of what emotions he might see cross Newt’s face. “Maybe the Thomas I was before loved her, but.. But the Thomas that woke up in the Maze, he’s always wanted someone else.”

Silence cleaved the world. Neither of them were breathing. And Thomas could have sworn even the cranks out in the night were holding their breath, waiting to see what might happen next. Anxiety was a current beneath his skin; moving swift and clear and with a power that suggested it could not be stopped. He was holding his head above the water but soon enough he’d be drowning in it. 

“Brenda?”

Thomas nearly laughed. Daring to open his eyes, he found Newt staring at him with a startling intensity. There was no beginning to read the thoughts flickering across the older boy’s face. A chasm was opening up before him; a dark pit of fear that threatened to keep him in silence forever. With a shudder that wracked him to the core, Thomas forced himself to leap.

“No. Not Brenda.”

A small sigh of relief slipped past Newt’s lips, and now he was the one with his eyes squeezed tight. “ _ Tommy _ ,” he murmured Thomas’ name like it might be his salvation. Like he’d been caught beneath a tidal wave and Thomas was his first breath of air. Thomas wanted to bottle the sound and find a way to listen to it over and over and over again. 

“You have to say it,” Newt whispered. “I have to - have to hear you say it.”

And Thomas’ terror was creeping up again. It was a living, breathing thing, burrowing under his skin and gnawing at his flesh until he was writhing with the agony of it. He shifted minutely closer, letting the tip of his nose brush Newt’s just enough to make them both gasp with the contact. 

They were a lightning storm in the making. Everywhere electricity crackled, waiting to be set free into the atmosphere. Waiting for them to collide, to explode the world in a catastrophe of colors so brilliant and beautiful you couldn’t look away. 

Thomas edged himself even closer, not daring to breathe, until his chest was pressed against Newt’s and his fingertips were oh so gently grasping the other boy’s elbows. The touch sent waves of fire up his arms. There was something so exquisite about the agony of this touch; the way it scorched and scalded and danced inside him. Thomas was burning and he never wanted the flames to be put out. He wanted the flames to crest beneath his skin until his bones were brittle and his flesh turned to ash. 

“Who was it that you wanted?” Newt panted, and Thomas thought maybe the anticipation was just as unbearable on Newt’s end. Maybe they’d both been waiting to collide for so long that a moment longer seemed to last an eternity. “Please, Tommy.”

Every natural disaster known to man was coursing between them. There were flames in his skin and water in his lungs and electricity in his veins and no air left to breathe. If Thomas just moved another inch, they would implode. The world would end. 

Forcing himself to take in as much oxygen as his starved body could handle, Thomas said the word that would end the world. 

“ _ You _ .”

And then he pressed himself closer and caught Newt’s mouth with his own.

And oh god this was what he had been waiting for. It was every moment in the Glade, every pound of feet through the Maze, ever near escape from WICKED, every breath he thought he’d never catch, every whim and wish and stupid hope of his heart. 

Hunger so strong it felt like he was on the brink of starvation was taking control of him; moving his mouth against Newt’s without leaving him time to pause for thought. Thomas couldn’t tell where he end and Newt began. They’d fused together so that not one piece of their bodies weren’t touching. They were chest to chest and thigh to thigh and mouth to mouth. 

They ended and began in each others arms. 

A new world began.

Newt’s hands rose to cup Thomas’ face, pulling him in impossibly closer. Thomas didn’t know what he was doing, he didn’t know if he’d ever be able to stop, he didn’t know if he ever wanted to. And there was so much fear in that realization.

He was so overwhelmed by that fear; that he would say the wrong thing or kiss with too much teeth or put his hands in the wrong place. There was so much he didn’t know, so much that was different, so much that he wanted so badly it hurt. 

Could your body be magnetized to another person? Was there such a thing as a power outside of your control that sent you careening into someone else with all the strength you could muster? Because that was how this felt. Thomas was moving without his own volition and he didn’t want to stop but he wanted to understand how something this strong and this real could be anything but a force of nature. 

This was not Teresa or Brenda. Newt was not soft, was not pliable, was not in need of Thomas’s protection. They were two alphas wrestling for purchase but neither could grab a foothold above the other. And Thomas was comforted by this fact alone: alpha wolves were mated pairs. Once they were bonded, once they’d claimed one another, there was no going back in this lifetime. And this was a claiming if it was anything at all. 

He was running out of air when Newt finally broke away for a breath, letting their lips just barely brush as he gasped out, “ _ Tommy _ ,” with a repetition that made Thomas think maybe Newt was trying to memorize that shape of his name in Newt’s mouth. 

Thomas was afraid of so many things, but not of this. Not of Newt. He let go of his paranoia, stopped listening to what lay out in the night and started listening to Newt’s breathing in the dark. He let go of his fear and stopped feeling the tightness in his chest and started feeling Newt’s heartbeat against his chest.

Sometimes the things you wanted were better left out of your reach. But sometimes the things you wanted were meant for you. And Thomas thought Newt was meant for him. They were marrow and bone - one could not exist and thrive without the other. They were the beginning and the ending, the push and the pull, the rise and the fall. 

He let go and kissed Newt again. Kissed him until their breaths became one and the stars made way for the sun and he was breathless with wishes grants and things remembered. And Thomas thought maybe Newt was right. 

Maybe it was okay to be afraid, maybe it was alright for him lean on someone else, so long as he could come back to a kiss like this. So long as there was one bright spot in his memory. 

So long as Newt was standing at his side.

**Author's Note:**

> As always I hope you guys have enjoyed reading this, and if you have please leave comments and kudos! I live for your feedback and it really does encourage the writing process :-))


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